


Deus ex machina

by ProwlingThunder



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Body Possession, Fix-it fic, Gen, Ownership is 9/10ths of the Law, Precursors, Reincarnation, adopted family, runaways - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 08:11:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8971369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProwlingThunder/pseuds/ProwlingThunder
Summary: “She tried to make it right, in the end. Much as she could. You believe in reincarnation, kiddo?”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So once upon a time I started a fic for a prompt on a kinkmeme.... and I bit off more than I could chew and it went in a way the requester hadn't prompted, so... yeah.
> 
> I might work on this some more at one point. Heaven knows I have enough notes on it...

The Farm was a quiet, out of the way place, where Dad raised sheep and Mom made textiles and bitter, brittle Grandpa Bill headed the small town that was planted on it. A few cousins-- people Desmond had grown up knowing, and by proxy their parents-- worked other portions. When he was little he went with Grandpa Bill to the forge, and caught a glimpse of thin, elegant blades only once. Nowdays there were only farming tools.

Desmond didn't do much of anything on the farm, exactly. He helped Dad with the sheep and Mom with her spinning and weaving, and he listened to Grandpa Bill's stories of men in white soaring from rooftops, and his departed Uncle Desmond, dead since the twenty-first of December, back in 2012. Desmond's namesake, with stories so large Desmond knew Grandpa Bill was making them up, but of course Grandpa Bill looked so  _ sad _ and heartbroken and far beyond his natural age that Desmond never had the heart not to listen.

By sixteen all his friends were a good half-decade older, married, moving out a little further in the antique town they had created. A homestead in the American Midwest, that felt like the right word.

By sixteen everyone else was falling into patterns and Desmond couldn't, wouldn't. The Farm was stifling, and Grandpa Bill was always watching him, always sad, always comparing him to his uncle who had been dead since before he was born, and Desmond could never make him happy, no matter how much he tried.

By sixteen Desmond was done. He couldn't stand it anymore.

He packed a bag and left in the middle of the night, on a moon-dark night, mindful not to look back until the homestead was a distant mark on the horizon.

 

...he swore he saw someone standing on the rooftop of his parent's home. He swore he saw Grandpa Bill, taller and stronger than he had ever seen him before. But maybe it was a trick of the stars, a trick of the eye; even his second-sight could not make out anything, this far away.


	2. Chapter 2

He wandered randomly until he hit the highway, certain no one would miss him-- except perhaps Grandpa Bill, and he was the only one Desmond felt bad about leaving, in the end. Would he worry? Would he care? Of course he would care. He would have to, if only to have someone to tell old stories to.

Desmond wandered.

Eventually he came upon an old gas station, rickety but still working, signs lit. He had planned out leaving, but not where he would go, and perhaps someone there could give him direction. There were two mobile homes there, dinky little things, and a car peeking out from the back, and an SUV-- or, he thought it was an SUV, bright canary-yellow with rounded edges and nice tires.

The guy pumping gas looked familiar, as did the woman coming out of the station. He had short hair, a little curly, and a short-sleeved tee shirt showed off a looping, tribal tattoo that climbed up his whole left arm. He was a bit tanned, like Desmond was, but not quite as dark as Desmond was, tanned from too many hours in the hot sun in his precious few years, but the stranger looked more natural, just a bit, not sun-kissed and unmaintained, somehow. And her hair was longer, pitch-black against too-pale skin, braided back out of the way. She wore a green sundress, and he wore blue jeans and a cream shirt, and they felt familiar in an almost scary way, how not-scary it was.

They both had gold eyes.

Desmond almost wasn't surprised when he found himself catching a lift with them out east; Aita behind the wheel, Desmond in the back seat, and “Hera, dear, just Hera,” riding shotgun. He wasn't surprised when he rode with them all the way out to New York, feeling like he belonged, or when they lent him the spare bedroom they'd “always had”, that had been “empty forever,” “waiting for the right person” to live in.

He had been surprised when the nightmares started, too real and too vivid to be true dreams, and Aita hung around, promising to listen if Desmond ever needed to talk about it, no matter how weird it sounded, he would always listen. He had been surprised when he caught sick and Hera hovered in his room like a concerned mother-hen, clucking and tutting and fluffing his pillow.

He'd been blindsided when he overheard Hera mention to her husband “I've always wanted a son,” and Aita laughed and that laugh lit bells of recognition in his mind and he realized in a measure just who they were.

Aita didn't laugh when Desmond asked him about it though.

He made two mugs of hot chocolate and they sat down at the kitchen table. Aita's smile was sad and familiar, pulling the scar that crossed both lips.

It felt like looking in a mirror. It was a mirror. It was so weird.

“...let's not tell Hera, okay, Desmond? She... doesn't know.”

Aita didn't tell stories quite like Grandpa Bill. But they were close.

He told stories of a proud group of people, thrilled by their accomplishments, and so very proud that they missed a huge misfortune, and so few survived by leaving their home. That they found a new world for themselves, and they mingled with the natives, and they shared their knowledge. But the knowledge they refuted, too advanced for them, content as they were with what they had. And there was war. And while there was war some noticed another great misfortune coming, and they sought to fix it. But they were too late. And so many died, and those who were left had to pick up the pieces.

He also told stories of a woman locked away, torn with grief from her husband's death, vowing revenge on those who were the cause, no matter the cause. How she stayed there, for lifetimes, until one person-- a human, one who she had grown to hate in her imprisonment, came and set her free with his life. Of how her lost husband had been gone for so long, and then the human breathed once more and became a vessel, and he was returned to her as she was released from her cage.

He didn't have to name names. Desmond knew. Desmond didn't know he'd known, but he couldn't believe he had forgotten.

“How does that... I mean.. why do I..?”

Aita grinned at him. “She tried to make it right, in the end. Much as she could. You believe in reincarnation, kiddo?”

Desmond said yes, because, really, what else was there to say? Because it was crazy, it had to be crazy, but it didn't feel like it was. It felt real, Aita said it with such conviction, such certainty, it felt right.

He furrowed his brow at the man, the not-him in a body that might have been, back in December of 2012, but wasn't anymore, because life didn't work that way. There couldn't be two of him, and that was Aita, and he was Desmond. He was Desmond, not his uncle. “...I think.. I think I was still awake. For a little while. A few minutes? I remember her, a little. I think she.. kissed me?"

Aita looked downright horrified. Whether because Desmond remembered, or because there'd been a short stretch where they might have been the same person, or two people in the same body, two minds overlapping each other, everything imprinted and remembered, Aita's brain downloaded into the Temple and Desmond's probably downloading, it didn't matter.

He wondered if Grandpa Bill knew about Aita and Hera Olympi, and what he might say or do if he did.


End file.
